Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

The Market For Hearable Devices 2016-2020 – And Then There Were Airpods…

The hearables market goes back to the first Bluetooth headsets which were launched in 2001, followed by wireless stereo headphones, which arrived a few years later. Neither made great waves in the market – headsets were associated with cabbies rather than celebrities and Bluetooth stereo headphones took almost a decade to attain any market share. In 2013, that started to change. Major brands were taken by surprise as consumers started to purchase wireless headphones. The most credible reason I’ve heard for the change is that it was driven by the growth of mobile video on larger handsets, with users preferring to dispense with the annoyance of cables when holding the phone screen horizontally. That’s supported by research from Parks Associates showing the average US smartphone user stream music or video for 90 minutes each day. Whatever the reason for the sudden popularity, there is no question that they are now fashionable.

From the article "The Market For Hearable Devices 2016-2020 – And Then There Were Airpods…" by Nick Hunn.

Previously In The News

When Everything’s Connected: Beyond The Smart Home’s Walls

Research firm Parks Associates forecasts that the smart home market will continue slow and steady growth, with 102 million smart home device unit sales in 2024, up 8% from 2023. The firm predicts...

How Parks Associates Helped Shape 30 Years of Smart Home Innovation

In a video interview from CONNECTIONS 2026 in the Silicon Valley, Elizabeth Parks reflects on the evolution of the connected home market, the growing role of AI and why the dealer channel still ma...

TV Becomes a Growth Channel for Commerce

“Streaming video and connected TV in particular absolutely tend to outperform linear TV,” said Michael Goodman, a senior contributing analyst with Parks Associates, a Dallas-based market research...

OpenAI Eyes AI Agent Phone, Kuo Says

“OpenAI is not a hardware company and must prove its phone performs well against the competition in terms of memory, camera quality, size, weight, screen responsiveness — all of that can be a chal...